


A Ghost of a Romance

by wewriteanyshit



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Drama & Romance, Eventual Romance, First Kiss, Frenemies, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, The Captain is Gay (Ghosts TV 2019)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22930474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wewriteanyshit/pseuds/wewriteanyshit
Summary: Finally, the Captain snaps and gives Thomas what-for regarding his feelings for Alison. But is there more to his anger than meets the eye?
Relationships: The Captain/Thomas Thorne
Comments: 18
Kudos: 149





	A Ghost of a Romance

**Author's Note:**

> Righty-ho, a few things before we get started:
> 
> \- this is basically a present for the utterly fantastic girl who runs this account with me, I promised her I'd write it and I hope she isn't disappointed! She is da best and the title was her idea!  
> \- this was originally going to be a jokey/crack-y fic (the working title was "lmaooooo imagine being heterosexual #cantrelate"), which gradually became more serious as I got more invested in it - this does not mean that it's very literary, or very good (it's a little inconsistent, I feel, but whatevs!)  
> \- I was beating myself up for not finishing this "in time" (in time for WHAT) but it took me nearly 2 months?? Which is a perfectly reasonable fic writing time?? Lesson, kids: be nice to yourselves!  
> \- I realised this is lowkey pretty similar to the wolfblood fic I wrote, so... sorry I guess  
> \- Thomas is a melodramatic bisexual icon  
> \- I can't figure out how to add on those extra silly tags which sucks bc I was going to have a field day

"Woe is me!" cried Thomas, ending his exclamation with a melodramatic sigh that could be heard at least three rooms away. 

The other ghosts all slowly turned around to stare pityingly at Thomas, whose outbursts of desperate misery weren't exactly a rare or notable occurrence.

"Now, what's all this about then, Thomas?" asked Pat with a slightly nervous tint to his voice, already knowing that the following conversation was unlikely to be enjoyable, productive or sensible in any sort of way. Talking to Thomas was like talking to a brick wall - a brick wall that was going through its awkward teenager phase and spewing questionable poetry.

" _Woe is me_ , Pat!" Thomas began, draping himself across one of the couches. "For it seems that... That..." This was followed by longing stare towards the window that most Hollywood actors could only dream of achieving. "... I have begun to fear that Alison may never return my affections!" 

Some awkward silences are tinged with a sense of confusion and bemusement, and the one that followed Thomas' deceleration was most certainly one of them.

"Er, right!" Pat said with caution. "Are you... Just now coming to this conclusion, then, eh?"

"Whatever is your possible implication?" Thomas replied, aghast. 

"He means that Alison was never going to love you back in a thousand years, Thomas," said Fanny flatly.

"Although you shouldn't give up hope!" Kitty added with a bright smile. "Why, I'm sure it could still be possible!"

"Yeah, right," scoffed Julian, who was slouching on a couch on the other side of the room. "He's got as much chance of getting with Alison as you have of being her _best friend_."

"Why, Julian! You're simply -"

"Silence!" bellowed Thomas, and all the ghosts heads instantly snapped to look in his direction, although Fanny did so with a roll of her eyes (and Robin was paying no attention whatsoever to what was going on and was instead experimenting with the electric properties of a new gift Alison had bought him, something called a "lava lamp"). 

"I cannot abide all of your wretched, pointless jibber-jabber concerning my one true love in this world!" he gasped out in horror, clutching his hand to his chest like a true dramatic. "Fair, lovely, Alison, the subject of my deepest desires -"

"Steady on, mate," Julian said with a snigger.

"- The one person with the power to warm my cold, broken heart, who created such a passion in me that I felt quite overcome..." Thomas choked out his words, a sorrowful look in his eyes. "Has rejected me, _spurned_ me no less, and left me alone in my death to fester away!" 

"Thomas, you are, quite frankly, an utterly ridiculous person and an excuse for a gentleman!" barked the Captain with contempt, leading a look of horror to descend onto Thomas' face. "Honestly, you throw all of your attention onto this married, still-living woman - for no particular reason, as far as I can see - and you're... _Actually surprised_ that she has no interest in you whatsoever? Why, Thomas, I dread to think that anyone ever _would_ be willing to tolerate a - a one-man amateur dramatics show!" 

"Captain! How dare you!" A utterly flabbergasted and horrified expression slowly descended onto Thomas' face, as he stood frozen in shock. "That is simply... unnecessary!"

With his lower lip trembling, Thomas spun round with a flourish, and stumbled through the door of the drawing room and out of sight.

"Oh, Captain!" gasped Kitty. "Do you really need to be quite so harsh on him?"

"The sooner he learns to stop living in a fantasy, the better," the Captain snapped, showing no sign of being any less harsh whatsoever. "It's obvious to any sensible person that Alison is just never going to fall in love with Thomas, and I can't say I blame her! Well, Thomas is not entirely without merit," he said before a thoughtful pause, before shaking his head and getting back to barking out his condemnation. "But he happens to be one of the most wet, foolish, incredulous people that I have ever had the displeasure to come across!"

"Captain, please, please!" cried Fanny, looking most put-out by the raging insults being fired across her drawing room. "There's no need for such vileness, it's most unseemly of you!" 

"Sometimes, Fanny, tough love is what's needed!"

"Where... Where was the love part?" stammered Mary. "Because I didn't really see any. Not at all, in fact."

Seemingly stunned, the Captain froze, staring beyond the ghosts to the wall beyond, which happened to be an unsettling ugly shade of green.

"Anyone can see that you've upset him, Captain," said Pat gently.

"Hmm. Thomas sad," Robin piped up for the first time that morning. 

"Oh pease, _do_ go and say sorry to him, Captain!" begged Kitty, twisting her hands in the flouncy bows on her skirt. "And then we can all be _friends_ again, and oh, won't that be lovely!"

"Well, I shall certainly try to make amends," the Captain said, his voice a little more measured and calm. "But do not blame me if not a single word I say passes into his frivolous brain!"

With that, the Captain made a sharp about-turn and strode through the doorway, leaving a chilly anticipation in his wake.

***

Pausing outside the deserted, dingy bedchamber in which Thomas spent most of his time (no doubt composing dodgy sonnets), the Captain took a deep breath as he attempted to mentally arrange his words. He was faced with the inevitability of being honest with himself and admitting that his true intents and purposes for being so infuriated by Thomas' affection for Alison were... Quite possibly not so impersonal, or based solely in reason. No, if he was utterly honest, it pained him to see Thomas' affection and love being so entirely focused on that woman when he'd had no such thing happen to him for quite a number of years. And the ghost life was lonely, nobody could deny that.

But if there was another ghost who could, perhaps, understand the yearnings which he had for loving company...

"Captain?" Thomas suddenly called from within the empty chamber. "Captain, I can tell that you're there. I suppose you've come to spew more vile insults at me, like some kind of - intolerant sewer?"

"Nothing of the sort," the Captain replied briskly - before catching himself and and softening his tone. "No, I merely wanted to take the chance to apologise."

"An apology, from your mouth?" Thomas exclaimed, sounding almost amused. "Why, it must be a miracle sent from above." 

With a shake of the head, the Captain stepped into the room, unsurprised to see Thomas sitting curled up in the corner with an expression of pure melancholy affixed onto his face.

"Dispense, if you please, with the melodrama, Thomas," said the Captain stiffly. "This is a chance for me to - retract the things which I've said." 

Sniffling, Thomas turned up his nose morosely. "You're truly sorry for all those vile insults you inflicted me with?"

"I truly am."

The Captain saw shock emerging from Thomas' heartbroken look, and truly did understand how cruel, how thoughtless, he had been - for here was a man who had been genuinely in love with a woman, no matter how misguided that might be when she was so far separated from him. Cut-off, unreachable, never able to be his, and yet she filled every one of his waking thoughts. 

He had known that so many times. 

"It was wrong of me to judge your affection for Alison as... Silly, or a flighting fancy. I shouldn't have dismissed what you felt - although I have _much_ to say about the way you treated her in your most unseemly pursuit -"

"Yes, Captain, I understand that now," said Thomas with a sigh. "I must make amends to my sweet lady Alison - why, I can't imagine how -"

"Be careful to remember, Thomas, that she is not _your_ anything, not by any stretch of the imagination!"

"Even when you apologise, you have to be obtuse!" Thomas got to his feet, and let out a folorn sigh. "I completely understand you now, even if in hindsight my love for Alison totally befuddled my better judgement, and I ought to begin to move onwards - although you probably have no idea what it means to be in _love._ " he scoffed scornfully.

"What shall you do now, then?" queried the Captain. "Now that you've ruled out this woman as a lost cause?"

"I shall - move on to better prospects," said Thomas primly. "Now, _you_ answer _me_ \- you have no understanding of true love at all, do you?"

"No, no," the Captain replied quietly. "I quite understand the feeling, I'm afraid."

"You speak of it as if it were a tragedy," said Thomas with narrowed eyes. "I sense that... In your past, somebody has done wrong by you?"

"More complicated than that, so much so that I doubt you'd understand." He didn't mean to dismiss Thomas in such a manner, but his thoughts had become preoccupied, dangerously so, with the past... A carefree laugh, reassuringly warm hands, stern, brave eyes that didn't falter in the line of fire, but always, forever, forbidden...

"Well, I would never mean to boast, _sir_..."

"Hmm."

"But I _do_ consider myself to be quite informed in the fields of love and romance," Thomas remarked with a knowing glance. "If I might be so forward, why, I do doubt that there's anything you could say that might surprise me." 

"Thomas," the Captain croaked, gripped by uncertainty. "You could never... You could never _possibly_..."

"Oh, try me!" Thomas gave an incredulous scoff, but he smiled afterwards with a genuine gentleness.

The Captain could feel all his aversion and isolation, built up in feeble attempts at disguising emotion, slipping away as he looked straight into Thomas' eyes, which were so overflowing with integrity and an urge, a true yearning for pure, unfaltering love. Had there ever been a time in all of their history he'd lived through where he had felt the same? Why, of course; its latest subject, despite all of his self-denial and internal confrontations, stood right before him. And who, therefore, could blame him for being so overwhelmed with anger at the sight of this man utterly enamoured with another.

"It has been nothing but an unobtainable dream, my entire life," whispered the Captain, stumbling over the lump in throat, "To... To tell someone I loved them, freely and with no kind of fear, and to have them return it without contempt..."

"Oh, my," breathed Thomas. "Oh, I think I do _quite_ understand. Something similar has happened to me - a number of times, might I add."

"Well, I doubt that sincerely," the Captain replied quietly, wrenching his gaze from Thomas' shining stare to the thickly clustered trees and glimmering lake beyond the window, beyond all of his worries. 

All of a sudden, he felt a shudder creep through him without warning - he gasped in shock, sure that had he had one, his heart would have beat out of his chest. For Thomas' slender fingers had curled around his own rough hand, in such a way that could have stepped out of his wildest dreams. 

"So, I was correct," Thomas murmured, quirking an eyebrow. "Never does my intuition fail me, my captain."

Before he could even begin to process Thomas' incredible, audacious words, the Captain found himself embroiled, not in a furious battle of wits and sharp words: but in a kiss. 

Pulling apart almost immediately - far, far too soon - out of shock, the Captain stared at Thomas incredulously, noting the impossible flush rising in his undead cheeks.

"How - how could you possibly -"

"My attractions could be described as _wide-ranging_ \- and they certainly were by my contemporaries, I'll have you know." Thomas spoke almost shyly, a far cry from his usual bravado and theatrics. "And when I began to suspect that your deep concerns around my passion for Alison had a more intimate root, then - why, how could I ignore that?" 

"Forget her, I beg of you," the Captain blurted out, taken aback by his own desperation. It didn't feel like anything he could say normally, but normality had vacated the situation. 

"She's already vanished from my mind. I could no longer imagine pining for her, after you revealed your feelings, indirectly but so obviously," Thomas replied, sweeter than normal, taking the Captain's hands in his own. "Am I right to believe that the interest I have in you is not denied, unrequited?"

_Unrequited_. The Captain had known that, so often, so long, that he felt that he'd been bestowed with some kind of miracle. The thought that after a long century, he could finally reveal every last romantic fancy, fancible daydream, and desire for love... Thomas had penned him his very own sonnet of affection, and his gratitude could not have been more keenly felt. 

"Thomas," said the Captain, his voice wavering in shock and awe. "You have brought me a great deal of happiness on this day."

"Well," Thomas answered connivingly, his mouth twitching in that lovable smirk, "I am very happy to announce that I feel likewise." 


End file.
